Philosophy 101

Philosophy 101

"Are we there yet?"

Bobby was bored. He had stared at SpongeBob all morning and there was nothing to see out the window. Just flat land, green grass, blue sky and cows. Big cows that mama said were buffaloes. But she was wrong. Buffaloes had wings. But she just laughed when he pointed that out to her.

“Are we there yet?” He whined from the back seat for the umpteenth time. While swinging his legs he could reach the back of mama’s seat. She had asked him not to do it several times. But it felt so good. Thump, thump, thump.

“Not yet, dear.” Was her voice a little tighter than before? “But it won’t be long, now. Why don’t you look at your tablet, try that new game.”

“Don’t wanna. It’s boring. It makes me fall asleep and I don’t want to fall asleep. I want to see when we get there.”

“Go ahead, close your eyes, dear. I’ll wake you when we get there?” Did mama sigh?

“Promise?”

“I Promise. I will definitely wake you when we get there.”

The air was cool when she opened the back door and shook him awake while unbuckling his seatbelt. “Wake up, sleepyhead. We’re here.”

“Where?”

“Here. You can’t have forgotten already.” She laughed as she set him on the parking lot pavement.

“But you said we were going there?” He looked around with bewilderment. More flat land, more grass.

“We did, now we’re here. Come let’s look around. They’re supposed to have all sorts of things to do here.” She took his hand and started to lead him away from the car.

“But I wanted to go there.” Bobby tried to dig his heels in while pulling on mama’s arm.

“Don’t whine, love. We’re finally got here. Now let’s go see what all they have here.”

“But mama! You promised we’d go there.”

“I asked you to please not whine, Bobby. Use your big boy voice. We just got here. We will look around, maybe have a hot chocolate, or an ice cream. After we’ve looked around here, we’ll go there.”

“Promise?”

“I Promise.”

Barely mollified but the promise of hot chocolate or ice-cream, and he bet he could get both, helped. “But what are we supposed to do here, mama?”

“This.” She said while dragging him between stalls and fences that held smelly, noisy animals. “We talked about it before we left, remember?”

“But you said we would do this when we got there.”

“Right.” She nodded enthusiastically. “And now we’re here, doing this.”

“So, then we’ll be doing the same thing here and there?” He was trying to get his head around today’s plans.

“No, first we’re doing this here, then we’ll do that there.” she answered.

He looked up at her, but she was looking at a table with little shiny things and kept asking the lady behind the table about the little shiny things.

“Then why did you say that we would be doing this there?”

“What, dear? I didn’t. I said we’d do this here.”

“But you did! Before we left, you said that we would do this there.”

“No. I said that we would do this here.”

“You are lying!” He raised his voice and stomped his foot, even considered throwing a tantrum the likes she had not seen yet.

“That’s not a nice thing to say, Bobby.” That tightness was back in her voice and the grip with which she held his hand became a bit firmer.

“But you did! You said we were going there and do this. You didn’t say anything about doing this here. Besides, we were here before.” Why didn’t she understand? It was so simple.

“No, no. We were there and then we came here.”

“But.” He sputtered. “But you said we were going there. I even asked if we were there yet. You don’t remember that?”

“Yes, dear, I remember you asking me. And I told you to go ahead and take a nap. That I would wake you the moment we got here.”

“But you were supposed to wake me when we got there.”

“Yes, I know, love. Look around. I did, didn’t I? We’re here.”

Bobby sighed. He had always thought that mama knew everything. But today he wasn’t so sure.

“Mama, we have already been here.” He could not keep the exasperation from his voice.

“No, sweetie. You are wrong about that. This is the first time we’ve been here. I have never been here before. I know you have never been here before.”

“We were here this morning.” He scuffed the toe of his sneaker into the packed dirt of the petting zoo.

“Absolutely not! We were there this morning. Now we’re here.” She sounded so sure of herself. Could he be wrong? All he wanted to do is be there.

“I wanna go there. Can we be done here?” He would even give up … “After we have the ice cream? Please?”

“Okay.” She sighed. “Ice cream it is and then I think we are done here. Come, let’s see if we can find some chocolate ice cream, or would you rather have strawberry?”

Now she was talking. This was the right track after all.

“Strawberry!”

When the strawberry ice cream was eaten and smeared all over his yellow t-shirt, they both smiled. “Let’s go there.”

Out the side window all he saw was green grass till it touched the blue sky. Here and there clumps of wingless buffalo. Did they used to have wings, and now the wings had been eaten? But those wings on his plate had been very tiny to belong to such large cows.

“Mama?”

“Yes, dear?”

“My tummy hurts.”

“Maybe it was the ice cream. It’ll pass, baby.”

Mama?

“Yes, Bobby?”

“Are we there yet?” His sneakers were thump-thump-thumping against the back of mama’s chair.

“Not yet, sweetie. Don’t you still have a video on your tablet?”

“Okay.”

Mama?

“Yes, love?”

“Are we there yet?”

The End (well, not really, right?)